Hot Summer, Cold War

RAILWAY BRIDGE PROLOGUE Flashback 1st August 1961 Today I am 5. It is hot. I have had a Cold War blue and yellow plastic Vulcan bomber from Woolworths in Cannock for my birthday. It shoots red missiles from a spring-loaded hole in the front. The shop had dusty parquet floors, wooden counters & brass door fittings. We lived at 174 Station Street until I was 8. A miner’s terraced house opposite Georgie Lunt’s chip shop, and around the bend from the railway bridge. Station St Cheslyn Hay. Photo courtesy CHLHS One of the earliest signs I learned to read, before plunging between the floppy pink covers of “Janet & John Book 1” at primary school, was the sign between our house and the bridge. It was in raised black script with weathered round red reflectors set into the letters like raspberry Rowntree’s fruit gums; “Caution. Max. Headroom 12’ 6”

“Dad, what does “Max Headroom” mean” …I asked as he pedalled us under the bridge and uphill towards home on the dark green, immaculately maintained BSA bike. The Sturmey Archer gears clicked. His dark blue bib & brace overalls have a packet of Players and a box of Made-in-Dudley matches in the patch pouch on the chest and a folding wooden ruler in the side pocket. His knees pumped up and down like mighty pistons. I was on the cross-bar, astride a not-very- padded red satin cushion, using a knotted tartan kipper tie as stirrups. Dad, in surprise, pulled on the rod brakes, which gave out a note akin to a yawn. “Eh? Can you read that, Son?” “Caution (pronounced cow-she-on)…Max..Head...room 12 dot dot 6 dot” “Bloomin’ ‘eck. " "Where did you learn to do that?” 

“I doe know” I replied, thinking about Grandad Jack’s “Valiant” comic in front of the blazing coal fire at their house in Low Street, or across the street at Uncle Frank’s, with the “By appointment to Her Majesty” Ready Brek packet and HP sauce bottle on his kitchen table under the redundant gas mantle, in front of the Victorian cast-iron cooking range. Or the Sally Army “War Cry” distributed just before the Wright's seafood cockle man came round with his basket, grease-proof paper bags and vinegar on Saturday nights at the Working Mens’ club, to shouts of; " 'ave yer got any mussels on yer, cock?"… … 

Well, “Headroom” means that’s how high the bridge is. In the middle of the arch, though. So a double decker buzz can’t get under it, because they are nearly 14 foot high, right? That’s why they go down Coppice Lane, and the little buzz up from Wyrley, the “Wyrley Whizzer, is only a single decker, see…” “Oh, orright” Dad was my Encyclopaedia Britannica. He lifted me off the cross-bar, and started wheeling the bike towards the back garden, through the cool darkness of the arched entry tunnel between 172 and 174. 

The free-wheel clicks to a stop. I hear the clack and echo of the latch when Dad opens the back gate. Through the telescope of the entry tunnel, I see my little sister Nina in a yellow dress on her Tri-ang tricycle under the pear tree at the top of the back garden.

 I stand alone in the sixties streetscape next to the flowering currant bush, in the dusty summer afternoon shade at the front of the house. I have never been alone in the street before. But now I am five. I look up Station Street, at Gordon Cross's grey Ford Popular outside Jack & Gil Harding's house, then down at the manufacturer’s plate on the cast iron wall cappings. The Wyrley Whizzer roars down a deserted street. Two little lads run out of the house opposite, and head for the allotments. I feel the hot diesel exhaust bounce off Georgie Lunt's chip shop windows.

  “Dad, what's “Jellyman Ironfoundry Cannock”? And what does “Her Majesty” mean?

 “Your Mom’s made a cup of tea, Son. Come on and I’ll tell you”.

 I hurry into the entry, still a bit wary of the dark and the musty smell of plaster and lath. Then into the pool of light in the back yard where my Vulcan bomber is propped against the Staffordshire blue brick ledge under the middle room window.

A dog barks. A baby cries.

 I am 5. I am going to The Top School next month. Janet and John Book One is going to be pretty tame stuff after Grandad's Valiant, or even The War Cry..

 But I don't know that yet.

 For now, the world seems old and new all at once.

 It feels like being born, again. 

 It feels like...

... Home.

Decades & School Dinners

The levelling effect of hot, subsidised, nutritionally-planned school meals was possibly at its most pronounced when we, the middle baby-boomers, were in our schooling years.

These were the years when the “bean cookers” in the Staffordshire School Meals Service still had more influence than the “bean -counter” or the “book -cooker” policymakers, who were busying themselves losing the plot just over the political horizon. (Expect mail on this one. Ed.)

Here is the first of three essays on the subject, covering Five Decades of School Dinners.

The Midstaffordian working title for this venture is “Am Them Kids All Right?”

[Regular readers will be indulgent of the crowd-pleasing nostalgic tone, and should feel free to add their own unpleasant 1960’s memories of dental caries, inedible items and wasted food in the interests of balance. Ed]


January 1961 i hold on to the Silver Cross pushchair as Mom walks us past Hassall’s sweet shop then turns out of High Street and into Pinfold Lane i am four i am wearing mittens and my favourite home-knitted green Balaclava helmet my breath freezes on the woolly mass in front of my mouth my little sister is wrapped up snugly in the pushchair Santa gave her the same winter overcoat as mine with six big buttons on the front i am five i haven't learned punctuation yet bit I'm getting the hang of CAPITALS. Oh. That's better.

Mom pauses at the oxblood steel railings behind the school. The kids are playing kiss-chase in the crackling morning air. Behind us, although it is mid-morning, the sun is barely above the horizon, and the long shadows of the kisschasers are dashing across the pencil-grey surface of the playground.

“Orright Auntie Edna”

Shout a dozen kids in rough unison, some of whom are genuinely cousins, some not.

“Is your Alan stoppin’ dinners when he starts school?” Enquires a voice from the line of littlies pressed against the railings.

I don’t hear the answer.

I am absorbed in the study of the pyramid-shaped white cartons which are piled into a crate on the other side of the playground, next to the Victorian gothic revival doorway of the canteen kitchen.

“Them’uns am all empty now. That’s our milk what we ‘ave before playtime that is”



Cheslyn Hay County Primary School 1960. Photo & map courtesy CHLHS

“Our Fred”, a real cousin, is enlightening me, having seen the puzzled, inquiring look.

“Are. Missis Jeavons cuts a bit off the corner o’ the box thing, an’ we ‘ave a straw an’all. An’ we doe atter pay for it neither.”

While Mom and the kids exchange chatter, I imagine what icy cold milk would taste like through a waxed paper straw.

Mrs Jeavons appears at the top of the steps, smiles in our direction, and blows a whistle. The kids say “Ta-ra Auntie Edna”, and assemble themselves into four shuffling lines, which quickly quieten down and file through another ogival gothic arch, into the corridor…

It was September before I learned what milk from a white “Jublee” carton tasted like.

On that first day of school, Mrs Jeavons snipped the corner of the pack, just before play-time, in the prescribed manner. Her scissors had pointy ends: we were only allowed to use the ones with round ends until we graduated to The Top Class, five years hence.

Like the other kids in the infants’ class, I had selected my straw from a grey carton marked “100 waxed drinking straws”.

The only sounds for the next three minutes were the gaggled gluggings and soft slurpings of forty straws.

Mrs Jeavons watched benignly over the silent communion of our third-of-a pint-sized community.
Photo courtesy National Archives

At playtime, refuelled with egalitarian energy, we zoomed around the playground pretending to be Spitfires or Hurricanes.

The school bully forced me to crash-land in the dark, northern corner, next to the bell tower. He asserted his identity by boxing my ears. When I refused to cry, and he saw that I had no morning snack, he re-joined the dog-fighters and looked for another little kid. (It would be some time before I was able to even the score using a bar of ex-lax laxative chocolate convincingly moulded into Cadbury’s Buttons. )

Being the youngest and smallest, I made friends that with the biggest kid in the class, who told me his name was Kev.

“Doe yoe worry, Mairte. That milk’ll soon build yer up. ‘Ave a Tairter Puff.”

He proffered an open bag of Potato Puffs, which he’d bought with a threepenny bit.

“Am yoe stoppin’ dinners? Me mom to’d me as the lairdy in charge o’ the cookin’ is Missis Cartwright, an ‘ers a bostin’ cook. Yoe wairte till yoe tairste ‘er pairstry.

Kev explained, in a scientific manner beyond his years, the three luncheon options:

“See, yoe’ve got three choices:
(i) Gooin’ wum. Yer can goo ter yer Gran’s or back wum if it ay too fur ter walk.
(ii) Stoppin’ samwidgiz. That ay too bad if yer Mom puts a bit’o variety in theer. But yer doe want salmon spread more than once a wick.
(iii) Stoppin’ dinners. It costs a bob a day, burra lot o’ the kids get free ‘uns.”

I wanted to learn analysis like that, and decided to try to casually sprinkle some (i), (ii) and (iii) type punctuational elements into conversation at the earliest opportunity.

The whistle blew, and I fell into file in front of Kev.

Lunchtime arrived after a reading lesson with Janet and John, Book One. Pink cover. I could read already, but kept it quiet as I didn’t want any newly-found friends discovering a smart-arse in their midst.

The school canteen was a tribute to the sobriety, practicality and occasional wackiness of its Victorian designers. The aforementioned gothic doors and windows were no doubt a nod to ecclesiastical respectability and other-worldliness, circa 1880. The window ledges were high: seated pupils could not see out. There was plenty of light on sunny days, and no distractions from the grown-ups’ world outside. During the six years of our primary schooling, our only view when day-dreaming was the Rosemary Tileries roof-tiles of the houses in Hatherton Street, and the occasional bemused swallow on the single telephone wire across the road.
Pinfold Lane School, from Hatherton St. circa 1915 Courtesy CHLHS
In the eyes of a five-year-old, the dining room seemed as capacious as any Oxford College refectory. Hot dinners and puddings were served from a hatchway at the southern end. The smells of home cooking diffused into the seating area. Today it was roast lamb, with bright green peas, scoops of mashed potato and steaming gravy from aluminium jugs. The potato had a sprinkling of dried parsley: we all looked at it carefully, then at one another before cautiously digging in. We sat at sixties Formica tables of 8. My cousin Fred was a Big Kid, and so had the job of Server.

Fifty years later, my revisionist memory tells me that we all ate every bit. It also indicates that pudding was pineapple crush with crumbly pastry and a flourish of mock cream. Water was poured from aluminium jugs, too, and into “Made in France” Duralex glasses. There was once again that feeling of communion, of a moment shared. A moment of normality.

Class favourites during thosr primary schooling years were cheese & potato pie, liver wrapped in bacon, even …SALAD (pronounced “sallid”). Chocolate sponge pudding with peppermint custard. Shortbread with pink sauce. Slabs of jam tart…

With our young minds well-nourished, in the playground after lunch we could hone our punctuation skills by pondering on such mysteries as:


(i) “Why do they put Made in France in English on them Durex glasses, Kev?” (ii) "Kev, how do they mek them milk cartons?"...
"Like this, Mairte"

In the good years, we paid a shilling for each meal. When our families fell on hard times, some of us kids qualified for “Free Dinners”, and got a life-lesson in how to cope with peer-group social stigma.

In 1961, the School Meals Service, and the supply of Free School Milk seemed to be as perennial a fixture in our everyday lives as those gothic revival buildings...

Stay tuned for this prequel's sequel, when we return to the 1970's.

We’ll see the emergence of Costcutter Analysis Milk Snatching.

Then, in the hope that maybe history could teach us something, we’ll travel to 1980, for a feast of Economic Fundamentalism, and the genesis of an obesity epidemic.

Then we’ll share some Good News Initiatives from the ‘90’s and the Noughties, and come bang up to date with Food For Thought for the Tenties.

AB